09. 01. 09. - 11:00

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09. 01. 09. - 11:00

Philharmonic New Year's CD goes platinum on 1st day

A recording of the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Eve concert has gone platinum on its first day on sale as the orchestra announced it would give 100,000 Euros of sales to Austrian charities.

The CD of the famous New Year's concert - held in the Musikverein concert hall in Vienna's first district - went on sale on Wednesday.

The six include catastrophe assistance for Austrian women, "Licht ins Dunkel" (Light in Darkness) and Catholic charity Caritas’ "Familie in Not" (Families in Emergency) fund, the "Rainbow" association, the St. Anna Children’s Hospital, the Neuner-Haus (a residence for the homeless) and "Viva-integratives Kindertheater Wien" (Viva-Integrative Children’s Theatre Vienna).

The money will come from revenue from a special preview performance of the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year’s Day concert for special guests on 31 December.

It was the first conducted by Argentine-Israeli Barenboim, who had already conducted the Philharmonic on a number of other occasions.

The concert also featured the first performance of a piece by Austrian composer Joseph Haydn at the annual event. The Philharmonic played Haydn’s  "Abschiedssymphonie" (Farewell Symphony) in honour of the 200th anniversary of his death to the accompaniment of a ballet choreographed by Vladimir Malakhov at Schloss Esterhazy in Burgenland capital Eisenstadt.

The concert was broadcast live in 40 countries and taped for later showing in another 20. Some 130 radio stations also carried it.

The theme of Austrian national broadcaster ORF’s intermission film was Linz as European Culture Capital 2009.

Some 41 million people watched the concert worldwide on 1 January 2008.

Austrian Times

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